1. Reading newlywed couples' blogs. It's cute and annoying at the same time.
2. Shopping at Michael's.
3. Watching loads of made-for-TV Christmas movies on Fox Family.
4. Listening to the new Killers album.
5. Reading my Chinese horoscope, (thanks, You).
I am a Fire-Rabbit.
I am Keen, Wise, Fragile, Tranquil, Serene, Considerate, Fashionable, Sneaky, & Obsessive.
Some of my Hobbies and Pastimes include: Writing poetry, hiking, planting gardens and trees, chatting with friends.
My Rabbit Dislikes are: **Touchy-feely people, abrupt curves in their routines, disorganization.
**I love touchy feely people, but everything else seems pretty accurate.
Also, in case you guys wanted to know what to get me for Christmas, here are a few ideas:
Suitable Gifts: Tapestry kit, CD, fine wine, easel, lyrics book
6. Deciding upon the worst song of all time, which happens to be Rock Me Amadeus by Falco. If you really want to watch the music video, I won't stop you.
7. Starting my own Etsy site, which you will be able to view at some point in the foreseeable future, I think.
8. Eating hummus.
9. Making Christmas presents for the handful of people I still like.
10. Homework.
11. Listening to Rob Pattinson cover Van Morrison.
october has been over for 12 days, and santa is now painting the pharmacies red & green, which i guess signifies the eminent force that is christmas nearing. and that's okay. i'm glad the month over and i'm glad that everything is moving forward, because there were times when i would've been okay with the world completely stopping. through the good moments that i wanted to last forever, to the moments that made me feel like my life was literally going to end, october passed and eased its way into a glowing november. an awful and costly mistake that was made countered some of the best live shows i have ever seen, an economic crash lead us to a new president and a new sense of hope, an election that brought a country to life. through everything, i moved forward and now, 12 days later, i am still here and i'm genuinely okay.
i want to thank everybody who helped me move forward. for their kind words and understanding and the undaunted courage to make me laugh when i could hardly breathe. there is no way for me to express how much it means to know that there are others in the world who refuse to judge in hope for truth, and i love you all.
anyway, here are a couple of worthwhile ways to spend a few of hours. see you there, come and say hi! bring your friends. eat, drink, enjoy great live music. remember how damned important it is to let yourself have some fun.
october 2008 as seen and documented by hannah stayner:
i hear all the time that any transformation is based upon progress. which is true, in the end, or else where the hell are we headed? sometimes it just hurts to know that you have to wait. and that whatever you're waiting for isn't even guaranteed. an absolution that may never come. is there an end to anything, or are we always attempting to go further? is that right, or is that wrong. should we ever just settle?
i am thrilled. i am inspired not only by a man, but by my fellow americans. by the hope i saw on my television screen and heard throughout my apartment complex on the night of November 4. hope that overshadowed fear, and anger, and hate. and i am proud. i talked to my father, who was in tears, as he and all his friends recited that honest declaration of hope along with over 200,000 people on one television screen. he said, 'my vote was for you.' and that's that. thanks, dad.
proposition 8 passed on the same night that our country voted in a black man as our nation's president. victory and heartbreak. i was able to pick the leader whom i think will, eventually, bring us back to life, and yet the man who chose my name on the night i was born is not allowed to marry the one he has been with since long before. we have come so far and i can't help questioning if i should just be grateful for that or wonder when the fuck we are going to get our shit together and go further. progress.
things are going to get shitty. a lot of people will say i told you so. but unless you are open to the fact that the world changes, you are going to get continuously let down. obama is our president, and that is so because people stood up for what they believed in and knew that they could change. if we're not together, then clearly, we've fallen apart.
why can't a campaign be something as simple as love, not war? and why can't the one person you actually want to be with be here and not there, not a million miles away? nothing is ever solved. battles are won and people regain hope but we wake up tomorrow in the same life that we shut our eyes on the night before, and we go forward. because whether or not you voted, that's the way it goes.
So now I am left wondering if there is any good left in our world at all.
My mom told me last night that sometimes bad things happen to good people. And she is right. A half-brother cannot financially support his family and avoids his father out of humiliation. A mentor's nephew attempts to hang himself. A roommate's dog is put to sleep. A best friend's father is diagnosed with a form of cancer that could not have been prevented. A mistake completely fucks up the next two years of your life, drains your bank account and drains your soul. An oldest friend and a younger sister question love when in reality, they deserve it more than anybody in the world that I can possibly think of. A country is terrified and confused and faced with a decision that will change the way we are living no matter the outcome.
Sometimes it seems like everyone is hurting, everyone is wanting something that they don't think they have.
I have heard one thousand times that everything happens for a reason. But if there is a reason for all of this, I am either truly naive, or incapable of understanding. It's so hard to have hope when everything around you keeps on falling the fuck down. But in reality, what else can you do? If you can't fix something physically, then you sure as hell better fix it mentally, or a new headline prevails: We really are going nowhere.
Here is some pathetic consolation that honestly should kick you in the ass every now and then. No matter how bad you think you have it - no matter who the hell is kicking you when you're already down - somebody in this world has it worse than you. This can either cause you to feel petty and selfish, or it can give you a dose of realism that is desperately needed in society today.
You will get a job. You will survive the next two years of probation and figure out a way to pay your fines. You will find happiness. You will find love. You will graduate on time. You will reconcile with your loved ones. You will grow up. You will smile again. And without a doubt, you will complain and cry and hurt so much that you can hardly breathe, but in the end, what the fuck else can you do?
October will end and November will begin, and life will continue whether you want it to or not. So in the words of my mother, the saint: have faith in whatever it is that you need to have faith in while understanding that others around you are doing exactly the same. We are united, even through fear, even through sadness, even through humiliation, and thus, we are selfish to think that we are ever truly alone.
So we watched the debate finally and there were points where I could hardly breathe. That's when I realized that I haven't really cared about anything lately as much as I care about the election. I think I need to be in love. Or get an animal.
You can tell me that "he" is, in the end, the man like all the rest before. But here's the thing: I can't vote for you. I can take the little bit of freedom that I have and use it how I see fit, with the understanding that maybe my hope does sometimes overshadow my "intelligence." But that's life, man. I can cross my fingers and hope that is enough.
Just don't say sorry, I'm not totally ignorant.
***
So I've jumped on the LA bandwagon and been feeling totally shitty and just completely sorry for myself, which is lame because we've been rewatching season 2 of Twin Peaks and it's been blowing my mind for roughly 2 hours a night this past week. It's just that there's so much negative shit going around right now like a virus, and you can tell, even walking around downtown, that people are totally bumming the fuck out. Living in this perpetual state of numbed caution is pretty damn terrifying.
I was talking to my dad the other night which is a semi-rare but fantastic occurrence, and (as with all recent conversations with pretty much anybody tend to do lately), talk turned to the goddamned economy. How he is afraid for friends and family and how the end to whatever we're living through probably won't come for a lot longer than it will take me to graduate college. F.u.c.k.
But at some point you've just got to accept where you stand in the world and the roles that you are playing in your everyday life, and understand that a lot of our fate truly is out of your hands. That which is not out of your hands (yet) is that which you still have the ability to change. And this is something that we do not have to be afraid of. So go ahead and trust your own personal choice of god, trust Obama, trust yourself; trust Secret Agent Dale Cooper and the genius of David Lynch. Trust a friend that will listen to the Silversun Pickups and smoke with you in a parking lot at three in the morning. Trust the ocean currents, or the fact that the stars are going to come out every night without fail because that is simply what they do.
Now is the time when people are going to need to start seeing their lives for what they are and not what they are not, whether that is completely shitty or completely beautiful. Because in the end, isn't the only real difference between what you've got and what you need that the things you need can't really leave you?
I guess you just have to keep telling yourself that no matter what we are losing, there are constants that will remain if you allow them to. My brother's short stories, Weezer's Blue Album, snow in October, Oki Dog, polaroids of my parents' first Christmas together a million years ago, smoggy skylines, Montana highways. People have waded through knee-deep shit before. People will drown in it before anything gets better. And thus, focusing on the things in your life that you have and the things you can still control has never been more difficult, but never been more important.
My opinion, for what it's worth. Which is probably just about nothing if you ask wallstreet.
Today is a good day to flex the muscles of the weary, A miracle's a miracle even when it's ordinary. We will walk on the water even though it seems scary, If someone will show us the way.
He said, "Do unto yourself as you do unto your neighbor - It's not an eye for an eye, It's a favor for a favor. And it's okay if this world has a billion saviors, 'Cause there's so many things to be saved."
And then take that opinion and do something proactive with it.
Not only is this your responsibility, but this is your right.
Love,
Hannah
It's clear, and I get it. Our economy is in the shitter and it's going to take a long time to get back out. But it's also going to take more than signatures and 700 billion dollars - it's going to take a group of people banding together in order to spark change.
So this is how I see it. It is entirely clear that the state of America today is somewhat undesirable. Yet somewhere inside of me, I still have the urge to defend my country because honestly, I have enough hope that through all of this complete and utter shit, we will be okay. To me, it seems that America can best be represented by its citizen body rather than its government and the decisions that Washington has made. Because hey, these are the citizens who have changed together and attempted to change one another, who have fought for freedoms and equality and the understanding that each one of us deserves. These are citizens who do care about the economy and who have supported the evolution of civil rights and donated time and money to aiding the less fortunate.
America consists of a mass of people in which the majority is good. Yes, I genuinely believe that. And because of these people, I also believe that no matter the negative views on the country, we, the people, make up America. Because of the enormous strides our country has taken throughout history to become what we are today, we exist in a country where liberty has been fought for and earned and is now our birthright. So long as the citizens can influence the government to use this in a proactive way, right or left or red or blue or green or whatever, I think we will be all right. It will take a while to get back on our feet and stand tall, of course, but doesn’t every great change need a beginning and a middle to see an end?
So yeah, America will continue to make mistakes. That is my prediction. That is the nature of politics, of the economy, and of the social class. Yet I also predict that through these mistakes, no matter how fucking gigantic they may seem, will come vast changes and better times. We're gonna be okay, someday, all the while remembering that sometimes it takes huge losses to receive huge gains. Violence, suffering, and severe economic failure have been an enormously influential part of our past, and there is no doubt in my mind that our future will see its fair share of the aforementioned. But what we cannot do is focus solely on the negative when there are so many great and vast accomplishments that we have seen as well. Let us not reside in a country based upon the foundations of fear; let us reside, instead, in a country based upon the ethics of a great and influential hope.
From an unstoppable 23 year old boy in Hawaii with huge things ahead of him to aman- a team - standing before our country and simply asking people to give a fuck - change is everywhere, so long as you take what has been given to you and use it however you see fit. Based on fact, based on opinion, and based upon hope. So you may not like either candidate. I've heard a million times in the past couple months, "It's like voting for the lesser of two evils." But that is absolutely noreason not to voice the opinions you hold on the viewpoints that either man will fight for in order to makeyour country better.
Guys, you live in a country where people have literally fought for the right that we all (aside from convicts and those 17 and under) hold today. As I look across the globe, it seems selfish not to realize that I am incredibly lucky and blessed to be an American voter, and I will exercise my freedoms in order to make a better tomorrow because not only is it my Constitutional right as a citizen, but it is my obligation.
It seems to me that what so often goes overlooked in the midst of overwhelming pessimism is America’s great and powerful ability to embrace the fact that the world changes. And the fact that each change that our country has seen to this day has initially required a mass of people to voice the need for transformation and to stand up against judgment and fear for what is right. Each has required people to listen and understand. And each has required a general governmental consent. In all of these cases, those needs have by and large been fulfilled. Because in America, when the people speak loud enough, the government is forced to listen. More often that is credited, positive reactions are the result.
I do not think there will ever be a time when our country can honestly say that as a nation, we have come as far as we need to go. Each individual, group, political party, and the president, along with many more still, will continue to fight for acknowledgement, power, and success. Because people still care. Countless minds will be opened from generation to generation only because so many people want to attempt to make America better. To create a much needed change. To start a revolution through the opening of ears, eyes, and hearts. And with each day, no matter how little it may seem, a bit of progress is being made somewhere, somehow.
Yeah, you can call me a bit naïve as I have chosen to focus on the positive in hopes that tomorrow will be better than today. But as a very great man, who is standing before us where he is today solely because his country embraced an immense change, once said, “There has never been anything false about hope.”
I guess it's September already, and even though I'm not quite sure how that happened, I think I'm okay with it.
Maybe fall is time for something different. New internship, new course schedule, fashionweek, Entourage, an amazingconcert lineup, new things to look forward to. There will be things ahead that will be hard, and there are things that I cannot yet see that will surprise me. And I'll take all of it and move forward because what other choice do we have?
Due to my two month summer hiatus, here is a photographic log of the end of Summer 2008 set to a backdrop of Wet Hot American Summer, turkey burgers, warm nights, Delta Spirit, and two dollar bottles of wine from Trader Joe's.
Sawdust Art Festival
Sawdust Art Festival in Laguna Beach
Balboa
Newport
feast
typical summer dinner
bbq
kickin it @ the beach house in newport with people i love
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